Barack Obama won four more caucuses over the weekend, raising the interesting question of what his extraordinary string of successes in caucus states means. I argued last Wednesday that it is evidence of hard work and planning, because low-turnout caucuses should generally be safe territory for an establishment candidate, while an insurgent usually tries to build momentum with big wins in quirky states like New Hampshire and California.
But others see it differently. To Joe Klein of Time magazine, Obama's caucus success is further evidence of a campaign running on pure enthusiasm and inspriation, vs. the gritty substance of Clinton: "It is no accident that Obama is nearly invincible in caucus states, where the ability to mobilize a hard core of activists is key — but not so strong in primaries."
Senator Clinton herself has argued that caucuses disenfranchise her base of working people generally and women in particular, telling a rally in Washington:
"You know, if this were a primary where everybody could vote all day, I'd feel pretty good about it.
"But it's not, it's a caucus. And you got to show up at 1 o'clock, and I already met three nurses outside and I said, 'Are you going to caucus for me?' and they said, 'Well, we're working tomorrow.'
Melissa McEwen took the argument even further, suggesting that caucuses disenfranchise Clinton-supporting women because they are shouted down by aggressive young men if they admit supporting Clinton.
I don't think any of these alternative explanations make sense. We don't have exit or entrance poll data from most of the caucus states, but in Nevada women were 59 percent of the electorate and in Iowa, 57percent. So it's not turnout. The McEwen explanation might make sense in the context of multi-candidate deliberative caucuses, like Iowa, where women who supported, say, Richardson or Edwards might be shouted down as their faction discussed where to go next. But in a two-candidate caucus, it's basically a straight-up preference vote. It's really hard to imagine that Clinton supporters undertake the considerable effort to get to a caucus and then back down, and vote for someone else, because somebody yells.
Weekday caucuses might be a problem for working people, but the last three were on a weekend, and at any rate, daytime caucuses should lead to a much higher turnout of senior citizens, which are very much Clinton's base. Indeed, 36 percent of Nevada caucus-goers were over 60.
Is Obama's edge in caucuses because of his "wine-track" appeal to better-educated, more affluent voters? If it were, you would expect him to be putting up big margins in college towns and creative-class cities to offset deficits elsewhere. But that hasn't been the pattern at all. In Washington, Obama won every county but one. King County (Seattle) accounted for barely a third of his margin. (As opposed to the usual pattern for Dems in Washington, who try to run up massive margin in King to make up for getting crushed elsewhere.) In Nebraska he won all three congressional districts. In Colorado, he lost only ten counties out of 64, none by large margins, and Denver and Boulder accounted for less than half of his margin. In Maine, which is a poor state, he also won across the state.
Affluence, whether measured by income or education, is not evenly distributed in states like these. To win victories as broad-based as these, either Obama is successfully reaching working-class and older whites, or the Clinton campaign is simply not doing the most basic work.
Which makes the real mystery of the caucuses why Clinton hasn't been able to bring out this base. Washington is a state of 6.5 million people, and while there's no party registration, 750,000 people voted in the 2004 Democratic gubernatorial primary. Clinton had the support of both the state's senators and the Machinsts union. And yet, somehow, she could not get 10,000 senior citizens, union members, nurses on the night shift, local electeds, and party hacks to show up for her. (An error in this sentence was pointed out in comments. The 9,992 number reported in results was precinct delegates. With turnout of about 200,000, Clinton's votes were probably more like 60,000. Sorry for the error.) That should be considered a weird and surprising result.
And it should change the conventional notion about which campaign is about hard work and discipline.
-- Mark Schmitt
